jamie gorelick, mistress of disaster

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Doug Ross @ Journal75% snark-free diatribes on politics, technology & security

Monday, September 15, 2008

Jamie Gorelick, Mistress of Disaster

It's not often that one person plays key roles in two -- count 'em, two -- trillion-dollardisasters. Welcome, my friends, to the world of well-connected Democrat Jamie Gorelick.

In 2004, observers were "astonished"to discover that a key member of the 9/11 Commissionhad a fatal conflict-of-interest. Jamie Gorelick had served as a Deputy Attorney General underBill Clinton from 1994 to 1997.

It was later revealed that Gorelick had established a pre-Patriot Act "wall" that prevented the

foreign intelligence and criminal investigative communities from collaborating.

Her 1995 memo, entitled "Instructions on Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligenceand Criminal Investigations", stated explicitly that they would "go beyond what is legally

required, [to] prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearancethat FISA is being usedto avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation."
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The result: shortly before 9/11, Gorelick's wall "specifically impeded the investigation into

Zacarias Moussaoui", the so-called "20th hijacker."

At the time, an enraged FBI investigator wrote a memo to headquarters which included thesentence, 'Whatever has happened to this -- someday someone will die -- and wall or not --the public will not understandwhy we were not more effective..."

The 2004 disclosure thatGorelick's service as a 9/11 Commissioner was the archetypicalconflict-of-interestshould have triggered a cacophony of complaints and demands for a newinvestigation. Instead, the mainstream media turned deaf and dumb and the controversy fadedinto the background.

Gorelick's "wall" wrapped a blindfold around America just when it needed its vision to stop theattacks that killed thousands and which sucked a half a trillion dollars out of the economy.
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Where did Gorelick turn up next?

Though she had no training or experience in finance, Gorelick was appointed the ViceChairman of Fannie Mae and served in the role from 1997 to 2003. During that six-year period,

she earned over $26 million.

During Gorelick's tenure, FNMA suffered a $10 billion accounting scandal, an ominous harbingerof the firm's looming troubles. One of the falsified transactionshelped FNMA hit earnings

targets for 1998, which triggered bonuses for top executives including nearly $800,000 toGorelick.
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Put simply "Jamie Gorelick was one of the Fannie executives who benefited from inflatedbonuses based on Enron-style accounting."

In 2002Business Week interviewed Gorelickconcerning the health of FNMA. She responded,"We believe we are managed safely. We are very pleased that Moody's gave us an A-minus inthe area of bank financial strength -- without a reference to the government in any way.Fannie Mae is among the handful of top-quality institutions."

Less than a year later regulators "accused Fannie Mae of improper accounting to the tune of $9billion in unrecorded losses."

Today, of course, FNMA is on taxpayer-funded life support, currently trading at 61 cents ashare. And because it was thought to have been "managed safely" (Gorelick's words), many top-flight financial services companies held its stock.

Last week it was revealed thattop insurer AIGwas teetering on the precipice of disasterbecause, in part, it held $600 million in Fannie and Freddie. Roughly $4 billion in those stocksare held by insurers, according to rating agency A.M. Best.
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Put simply, FNMA's collapse helped touch off the current swath of instability in the financialsystem.

It's not often that one person plays such a key role in two unmitigated disasters.

Democrat Jamie Gorelick is just such a person; that is why she has earned her nom de guerre

"The Mistress of Disaster".

What do you call someone with a Midas Touch, only instead of gold everything they touch turnsto s***? That's what Gorelick's got.

If I was one of her associates at the law firm of WilmerHale, I'd keep my head on a frickin'swivel.
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jamie gorelick, mistress of disaster

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